We live in an era where there has never been more awareness around the quality and safety of the food we eat, while simultaneously seeing more and more confusion around the topic. Our current dietary guidelines tell us to keep saturated fat intake at less than 10% of total daily calories, while showcasing a giant marbled steak at the top of the inverted food pyramid. Consumers are told to avoid ultra-processed foods without being given a definition of what they are (because it hasn’t been decided yet). Industry professionals at the conference laughed at the lack of transparent and scientific research that led to these and many of the claims made by the current administration. One particular point of contention with transparency and regulation surrounded the GRAS loophole in food additives, where certain substances are allowed to enter the US market if they are “generally recognized as safe” through expert consensus and evidence, thus avoiding the FDA pre-market approval process for food additives. When asked during one of the sessions, the current FDA commissioner, Martin Makary, claimed that he hopes to do everything he can to improve the general quality in food, but the GRAS loophole is an issue that should require less government control and should be driven by consumer demand. However, limited transparency raises questions about how easy that demand would be.
Interested in learning more about this topic, I attended the panel session: Shining a Light on GRAS, featuring one of GWU’s law professors, Katya Cronin, Melissa Halas from the Non-UPF Program, Pennsylvania Representative Natalie Mihalek, and Stuart Pape, an FDA-advisory chairman for the Polsinelli Law Firm. What started out with a brief history lesson into GRAS quickly turned into a debate over the FDA’s responsibility and powers for fixing its problems. GRAS was never meant to be the dominant pathway; it was initially created to exempt common, long-used food ingredients, such as salt and vinegar, from repeatedly undergoing the intensive pre-market approval processes. However, since becoming voluntary (meaning companies can self-determine safety without notifying the FDA) over 98% of new food additives enter the market through this process. Due to this loophole, potentially unsafe substances are able to readily be a part of our food supply, leading to widespread medical complications down the line. The majority of GRAS ingredients are present in highly-processed foods, which continues to disproportionately affect the US population through long-term and systemic socioeconomic, and thus health, disparities. Additionally, ingredients can be deemed safe in isolation while limited research has been done on their cumulative and cocktail effects. When proposed that the FDA should make GRAS mandatory again instead of voluntary, debate sparked over whether or not they have the legal standing to do so (which they do).
I had the opportunity to briefly share my experiences with GRAS ingredients and consumer trends in food service with Rep. Mihalek after the panel, during which she talked about the importance of transparency for consumers and that “the FDA is more focused on what kills you tomorrow,” not later in life. The EU takes a strict safety assessment for all new ingredients (currently sitting at roughly 400 approved additives), whereas the US’s “innocent until proven guilty” approach has allowed over 10,000 additives to enter our food supply. The GRAS contention revealed a much larger problem, in that the US government tends to take a reaction, rather than prevention, approach to health policy. In order to fight chronic disease, we need to tackle the problems at their root causes, not just treating them once it’s too late.